Study Finds Majority of BC Parents Struggling to Understand Province’s Grading System in Schools
When asked to choose the correct meaning of two of the new descriptive grades—“Extending” and “Emerging”—from a list of choices, more than 60 percent of B.C. parents were unable to do so, indicates the study, which included a series of polls conducted by Leger on behalf of the think tank.
One of the benefits of the new scale is that it “views learning as ongoing, rather than signaling that learning is done,” the information sheet said.
Identifying the Correct Meaning
The Leger poll asked parents to identify the correct meaning of the descriptive grades “Emerging” and “Extending” and letter grades “A” and “C” from a list of choices.
As for the letter grades “A” and “C,” the Leger poll indicates that 91 percent of B.C. parents said “A” was “clear and easy” to understand and 84 percent said “C” was “clear and easy” to understand.
‘Harder for Parents’
The findings on a national level suggest similar results as those for B.C.
Michael Zwaagstra, a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, says the new grading system in B.C. schools has created a barrier for parents.
“By switching from letter grades to descriptive grading, the government has made it much harder for parents to understand how their children are doing in school,” he said in the Oct. 24 news release.
Meanwhile, the study said 98 percent of Canadian parents say “regular, clear assessment of student performance is important to them.”
Leger conducted a series of polls via its online panel for this study, which surveyed parents of children aged 5 to 18 enrolled in public and independent schools. The first consisted of 1,200 interviews conducted from March 25 to April 8, and the second consisted of 690 interviews, with the same pool of respondents, conducted from June 27 to July 8.
For the first poll, 1,000 interviews were conducted with a representative sampling of parents across Canada, while an additional 100 were conducted in Alberta and B.C. while ensuring a representative sampling was maintained across the country.
